How to replace your rear wheel bearings without a press

I was changing my rear wheel bearings today and thought it might be cool to do it without the press and take some pictures in case anyone wants to attempt this at home. It's a pretty simple process, but a visual walkthrough might help some people so here we go.

Attach a slide hammer to the lugnuts and give it a couple solid hits to pull the hub out (it's easiest to do this on the car).

This is what it looks like after the hub has been removed.

Remove the upper and lower bolts that hold the remaining bearing housing and pull it from the car.

The big c clip that keeps the bearing in the housing will probably be rusted in by now.

Hit that bad boy with some sort of penetrating oil and give it a few taps with a chisel in the direction show to break it loose.

After you have it loose, use some c clip pliers to remove the clip and turn the housing over.

Secure the housing in a vice and knock out the bearing with a hammer and socket/pipe.

This is what it looks like with the bearing removed.

Clean the inner bore of the housing and lightly oil it to help keep the new bearing from binding when it is installed.

This is an important part, so take your time. Make sure the new bearing is sitting squarely on the housing and lightly tap it into place. Make sure it goes in straight by alternating your taps from side to side on the outside lip of the bearing.

Make sure that you drive it all the way down into the housing, so that the groove for the c clip is exposed. Grease the groove a little and reinsert the c clip.

Remember this guy? We need to get that bearing race off of there before we can put the hub back into the bearing.

This is the part we are going to remove.

Put the hub in a vice to secure it and use a chisel to drive the race off of the hub.

After you remove the bearing race, check the hub for any nicks and file them smooth.

Set the hub squarely on the bearing and start tapping it into place.

Drive it all the way down, using oil if necessary to keep it from binding.

Turn the housing over and check to make sure that the inner bearing race didn't start to pop out the other side, if it did gently tap it back into place.

Put the housing back onto the car and reinstall the upper and lower bolts that hold it in place.

Put the rotor back on and then the brake caliper assembly. Reinstall the two 14mm bolts that hold the caliper bracket in place.

Replace the axle nut and torque it to spec, then use a chisel to peen the nut to the groove in the axle.

That's about all there is to it, I would suggest using an anti-seize compound on all of the bolts and axle splines.

Those are all good ideas hustler, but I probably wouldn't suggest people go attacking the inner race with a sledge. Someone who isn't used to swinging a hammer can do some damage to the machined surface of the hub pretty fast.

The freezer and the oven is your friend. Installing old style bearing races on break drums I use to just put the drum on top of a wood stove, then you could just about drop the race in the hole. Not sure you could do that with this project but you could heat the part you want to expand and cool the part you want to shrink.. then the magic happends

Quote:

Originally Posted by j-po

Looks like you are loading the bearing rollers while driving the hub in. If so that bearing may not last long.

You could probably use the original race to support back to prevent loading the bearing rollers.

BTW, +1 on using the old bearing to tap in the new.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hustler

My personal preferences:

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for the love of Mephistopheles, repack the bearings with AMSoil 2000 so you never have to do this again.

What do you think about Green Grease??? Love that stuff.

I hold in my hand a National "Moog" replacement NB bearing. I don't see how you can repack these suckers. Must be a different design.

Nice, clean, & simple write-up. Good job & nice pictorial.

Edit: actually my bearing is the same design as the one in this pictorial... How the heck to you repack these things?

What bearings are you guys using? I'd rather not re pack the rears. I can get NTK rears for $40/ea or so. What about front hubs? The prices seem to vary bigtime on hubs. I don't mind repacking the fronts with some good grease. I need bearings on all four.

What bearings are you guys using? I'd rather not re pack the rears. I can get NTK rears for $40/ea or so. What about front hubs? The prices seem to vary bigtime on hubs. I don't mind repacking the fronts with some good grease. I need bearings on all four.

Ok good to know. The rears are starting to make noise so I figured it's best to replace everything. Those art hubs look nice. Pricey but nice. How many hours do you have on them so far? Any sign of them starting to wear?